David Michaelson & Company, LLC

Research, Planning & Strategy Services For Marketing Communications

Our Approach

The most expensive marketing communications programs are those you get right the second time.

All too often companies rely on their intuition when developing messages and strategies that will motivate their target audiences. This approach, while often producing highly creative work, can fail to achieve its communication goals and objectives, resulting in a significant waste of marketing communications budgets as well as lost opportunities that often can never be effectively quantified.

Formative research and measurement are the keys to make sure you get it right the first time.

The most effective way to get these messages and strategies right the first time is to understand the needs, issues and concerns of your target audiences as well as understand what motivates them at each stage of the communications lifecycle. David Michaelson is one of the leading practitioners in developing research methods that result in highly motivating messages and strategies. We have done this work for Fortune 500 corporations, start up companies, universities and non-profit organizations. We invite you explore this website and to review examples of this work.

Dr. Michaelson is a member of the Commission on Public Relations Evaluation and Measurement and is frequent speaker on measurement issues facing the public relations industry. He is a research fellow of the Institute for Public Relations and the recipient of the Jackson, Jackson & Wagner Behavioral Science Prize for 2008, awarded for outstanding contributions to the research body of knowledge by the Public Relations Society of America.In 2009 he was named Public Relations Research Expert of the Year.

He has extensive experience in information technology, telecommunications, employee communications and media analysis. This experience includes work with Comdisco, AT&T, IBM and award winning work for McKesson and MetLife.

David Michaelson & Company, LLC was originally founded in 2001 to fill the gaps in formative research and measurement systems for the marketing communications industry. Over the past several years, the firm has developed groundbreaking research techniques in content analysis systems and message development. Dr. Michaelson has also served as President and Chief Research Officer of Echo Research and Managing Director, Head of Research for Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide. Before joining Ogilvy PR, he was a managing director at GCI Group and a principal of David Michaelson & Associates, Inc., a full-service research company serving the communications industry. Earlier in his career, Dr. Michaelson was a director of research at Burson-Marsteller.

He holds a Ph.D. from the New School for Social Research in cultural anthropology and is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.